Harvard University's solar dimming project, aimed at preventing climate change, involves the rise of special high-tech dust into the stratosphere (12 miles above Earth's surface), which will create a giant umbrella, reflecting some of the heat and rays back into space. This will weaken the effects of sunlight and potentially protect the Earth from global warming.
Bill Gates, the 63-year-old Microsoft founder, has now not only joined the project, but also started funding it. According to MailOnline, experiments on "artificial sky clouds" should have begun several months ago.
The initial test is believed to cost $ 3 million and is known in the scientific press as the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx). It used a special scientific balloon, which was raised into the stratosphere over the New Mexico desert and sprayed 2 kg of calcium carbonate dust there.
According to the report from the experiment, the test was absolutely successful, but the researchers fear that SCoPEx could trigger a catastrophic series of chain reactions, including severe droughts and hurricanes. The calculations frightened the researchers so much that at this time the experiments are suspended.
It is said that when the advisory group was assessing all the potential risks, one of the directors of the Harvard team, Lizzie Burns, said: "Our idea is terrible … But climate change is even worse."
Nonetheless, Gates has been hard at work funding this project, which began as a partnership between chemist James Anderson and physicist David Keith (both of whom were from Harvard). It's hard to even imagine how close to the heart of the topic of climate change Bill, who constantly talks everywhere about climate change and his passion for its reduction.
In his blog, Gates writes: “We have two problems to solve, and the first won't come as a surprise to us: we need to do more to harness the power of the sun and wind. And thanks to falling prices for solar panels, wind turbines and other technologies, the deployment of renewable energy systems is more affordable than ever before….”
In other words, Bill writes a lot about ecology, but does not write anything about his strange project, to which he gives all his money and energy. And this is weird. Now you have to look for information in other sources.
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According to the Harvard University website, the plan is to use a hot air balloon "to lift a package of instruments about 20 km into the atmosphere."
Thereafter, very little "material" will be released. This mysterious "stuff" will initially be ice to ensure it works properly. It will then be replaced with calcium carbonate, a common mineral dust.
In an almost reassuring tone, the website states that the test poses no "significant hazard to humans or the environment," and that "calcium carbonate is a non-toxic chemical commonly found in nature."
Editorial comment
The idea of Bill Gates to join this strange project surprised us, like everyone else, on the one hand, and on the other, it did not surprise us at all.
she astonished us because, although Bill is still in his right mind and at an active age, nevertheless, 63 years old is not 33. While the project is brought to mind and launched, while the climate changes, decades will pass and Bill, unfortunately, among us will no longer be. Therefore, it is somehow not clear: why should this elderly gentleman decide what the climate will be on the planet after the planet says goodbye to him? Let it be decided by people who are now 20-30 years old and who live in this new climate. Perhaps they get a kick out of global warming and it’s not some grandpa from Microsoft who decides what kind of atmosphere they want to live in.
On the other hand, the fact that Bill was put on this project is not surprising: Bill has such a job to lead everything. For example, the same firm Microsoft, which in a short time took such positions in the global market that no monopolists dreamed of. And then she merged these positions, after which Bill poured “for charity” all that he had acquired by back-breaking labor. In the terminology of special services, Bill's position is called the word "wallet".
True, nobody knows who this wallet belongs to, but these people (people?) Have been working on spraying something in the atmosphere for a long time, and not from balloons, but directly from passenger planes, where some mysterious tanks with spray.
And from time to time, these tanks even leak into the salon. Therefore, when Bill finishes fighting for climate change, we do not know, but, apparently, the new climate will look something like this: